Work Text:
When Nona’s eyes pop open she feels remarkably co-operative. The dream is still brand new in her memory, sitting right on her tongue like a rapidly melting ice cube, and she is magnanimously prepared to detail every bit for Cam’s waiting pencil to scratch down. She can imagine Cam saying thank you, Nona, and good job, Nona, and don’t worry about breakfast, put on your hat and your mask for school. Or at least, to face bracing reality, the first two.
But Cam isn’t there at all, not sitting by Nona’s bedside or tucked beside her or shifting restlessly by the window; and the room is still dim, only faintly brightened by the fuzzy blue light filtering through the curtains. For a brief and horrible moment, through the cottony just-woke-up fog, Nona thinks that something must have happened to poor Cam. Perhaps Palamedes was wrong, and the light got to her—perhaps Blood of Eden came through the door very quietly, and took her but not Nona—perhaps Pyrrha had finally convinced her to leave, and in their rush they had forgotten to wake her up.
She only frets for a second, though, because she isn't three months old any longer and has the presence of mind to firmly tell herself that she's being silly. Instead she stays as still as she can possibly be, and makes her breathing quiet, and listens as hard as she can until she hears hushed voices deeper within the apartment.
Even as old as she is, which is five months nearly exactly, a rush of hot relief goes through her when she manages to pick out the warm sounds of Pyrrha and Cam's voices in particular. (When Pyrrha wants to, she can make her voice deep enough that you can feel it in your bones, and it shivers through Nona beautifully now; and she can just barely make out the vague shape of Cam's clipped words, the way that she cuts them off like she's slamming her knife through them.)
She closes her eyes. It isn't the same without Cam warm beside her, but she's still hazy-tired and she's quite good at sleeping when she puts her mind to it. She arranges herself in a nice and interesting position, and takes several deep breaths in-and-out, and she listens to the sounds of the Building and the city outside…
"Don't squirm," says Pyrrha, her voice drifting through the apartment, chased by the sharp crack of skin slapping against skin. Nona thinks that she must've clapped very harshly, or otherwise hit her thigh in amusement as she tends to when she's too pleased with her own joke, but instead Cam says:
"You're holding back, Dve," and also, "I can take it."
Nona's eyes pop back open. She can't help it—there's just something sparkly and husky and tantalizing about her voice, something special and extra-nice, and Nona is inexorably drawn toward it. She slips out from underneath the blankets and pads bare-footed down the hall to properly eavesdrop.
The kitchen door is already open a crack, and if Nona hovers in the doorway and leaaaans just right, she can see Cam and Pyrrha on the fold-out bit of the couch. She had assumed it was probably some kind of sex thing, considering the waver of their voices, and she had been right: both of them are naked, indulgent expanses of warm skin exposed to the open air, and Pyrrha's penis is hard and bobbing prettily.
She had overheard Pyrrha and Cam's sex things before, when she was a month younger and worlds less knowledgable, but it hadn't interested her then at all; they had only been moaning and saying each other's names, which was honestly quite droning after the first minute or two. No one had made fascinating hitting sounds. No one had said anything about taking it, not with the gritted and lovely sparkle that Cam had.
As she watches Pyrrha rears up a big and beautiful hand—holds it there, hovering like a bee above a flower, darkly silhouetted by the blue light—and then brings it down, her palm smacking against Cam's bare bottom with a resounding smack! Nona gasps: she can't help it.
Cam's muscles tense and her breath comes out in a harsh puff, all at once, but she doesn't make any sound otherwise. "You're condescending to me," she says. "I'm not going to break."
Pyrrha pats her ass gently. "Mm-hmm. I'm sure Sextus used to hit you with all sorts of paddles, sugar," she says, which is strange, because Nona is fairly certain that Palamedes would never hit anyone. She had once watched him carefully pick up one of the big house spiders with a glass and a piece of notebook paper to put outside, which Pyrrha had called typically bleeding-heart but Nona had been glad of—sometimes when Pyrrha squishes them underneath the heel of her boot she feels briefly, unspeakably sad.
She doesn't feel that same unspeakable sadness watching Pyrrha hit Cam. Instead a squirmy interest blooms inside of her, warming up her insides.
She wants, badly, to creep around the door and watch up close. Cam would be upset if she asked to pull up a chair, no matter how nicely she phrases it, even if she promised to eat as spectacularly as humanly possible for an entire week—but still, how thrilling! To see up-close the tension in Cam's lips, the way she'd rocked forward into the cushion when she'd been hit, the shape of her body curling up like a fallen leaf.
Her cheek presses against the door as she leans in closer, trying to get a better look. She could hold Cam's hand, if she was allowed, thread her fingers through Cam's and press their sweaty palms together. And she would touch her face, tracing her fingertips over the points of tension and the spots where her blood is hot and close to the skin, and dip her fingers between Camilla's perfect lips to touch her teeth.
Would it be different, touching her when she's sweat-soaked and arching toward each sting of pain? Or would she feel much like she does when Nona curls into her side every night, and Cam tells her hushed stories until she drifts to sleep?
The idea is so exciting that she leans a little too hard on the door, and it creaks open underneath her weight. The spell is broken almost immediately. Pyrrha curses under her breath, a bad one, and she says, "Nona? Honey?"
Nona tries not to look or sound like anything. She crosses her fingers, middle-over-pointer like Born In The Morning had taught her, and holds her breath—but Pyrrha pokes her head around the door and her gaze lands right on Nona.
"Hey, you," she says. She is very rarely entirely naked where Nona can see her, these days, and her body is beautiful and magnificent and wonderful to look at. Thick scars pepper her skin, roping especially around the breadth of her shoulder, and Nona wonders if she made the same kind of tight face when she got them as Cam had on the couch, or if she had gone quiet and guarded and pinched-up. Her penis is softer, and hangs in a new way now; Nona wonders what it feels like to touch, if it's nice or a bit odd.
"Hi," says Nona.
Peeking around Pyrrha, she watches Cam pull the blankets around herself to cover her body. Nona thinks this is a tremendous shame. Pyrrha's body is very nice to look at, gorgeous and unique, but Cam's body is the most beautiful one in the world. She says, "What do you see?"
"Not much." This is a lie, technically, because she knows that Cam is asking did you see the hitting, and by extension do you have any questions, we're here if you want to talk. But she doesn't want to be asked if she has any questions, and she certainly doesn't want her questions to be written down in the notebook for Palamedes to look at later.
Pyrrha doesn't look like she believes her, and Cam doesn't either but she's too far away to really tell; the only giveaway is how she holds her shoulders. "You want me to tuck you into bed, kid?" she says.
What Nona wants is a front-row seat. She wants to suggest maybe you could hit her with the brush, I think she'd like that. Instead she just says, "Okay," and she lets Pyrrha lead her back to the bedroom, and kiss her forehead, and arrange the blankets just right on top of her body.
Even when she closes her eyes and listens as best as she can, she doesn't hear Cam and Pyrrha do any more sex things that night; she slips into a restless sleep and doesn't wake again till the morning.
In the morning no-one mentions Nona being caught at all, although Cam coughs into her fist when Nona asks politely if she'd slept well and Pyrrha winks at her over her awful, rubbery eggs. She makes a meaningful comment about Pyrrha looking nice, hoping to be exempted from eating an entire bowl, but Cam says, "Another three spoonfuls" and her hopes are dashed.
"Where's Palamedes?" she says, rocking back in her chair.
"We spoke before I woke you up," says Cam.
Probably writing notes about her, and last night, and whether or not she'd heard anything, and what it could all possibly mean. Nona scowls. "I wanted to say good morning," she pouts, and swirls her spoon around the bowl.
"Three bites, Nona," Cam reminds her, and then, "He says hullo."
Nona scoops the smallest amount of egg on the tip of her spoon as she can, and grimaces as she swallows it down. "Can I see him after school?"
"Maybe."
Under Cam's watchful eye, she chokes down another two teeny-tiny bites, and then it's time to hurry off to school. She's amazed that no one says anything about how much she'd eaten, but Pyrrha is preoccupied by trying to find a cigarette in her pocket and Cam seems to have deemed that she's suffered enough.
In the morning Nona idles in the back of the classroom and presses her fingernails into the pads of her fingers, to feel the pain blossom and then squirrel itself away again. Usually she watches a little more closely, but today she keeps thinking about the face that Cam had made last night—the way her voice had sounded—the slap of Pyrrha's hand coming down on her bottom.
Had it felt special, the hitting? Had Cam felt the same squirminess that Nona had, pressed against the door? Or had there been something unique and untouchable, something that Nona doesn't quite understand, that Cam had been pressing toward?
She wonders if Pyrrha would hit her like that, if she asked carefully and assured her that she'd be okay. Or if, and the very idea is almost unbearably nice, Cam might.
Nona feels hot and embarrassed all of a sudden. She thinks about something else as quickly as she can.
The Angel arrives in the afternoon, and sends Nona out to watch Noodle leashed-up in the courtyard, and thanks her profusely for going. She's going to be mixing things with the kids, she says, and if Nona wants her own vials to mix then she's happy to leave some behind in the classroom.
Noodle sets himself to burrowing his long, spindly nose in a soft bit of dirt, which Nona surmises is probably okay. She sits by the rock, protected by patchy shade from the sun, and curls her knees up against her chest. Then she spreads her palms out in front of her and considers them.
If there really had been something special about the hurting, something that had stirred up that sparkly sound in Cam's voice—surely Nona could do the very same thing. The rhythm of hands and touch is simpler than breathing. She thinks of the heat that must have clustered underneath Cam's skin—of the strain of Pyrrha's penis—of the shape of Cam's body betraying pain and pleasure at once. She decides Noodle probably won't tell anyone if she tries something out.
At first she tries rolling up her sleeve and hitting herself with an open palm, which she can barely feel. Maybe her tiny wrists and her tiny arms are less well-suited for this kind of thing than Pyrrha's lovely big muscles and broad hands; Honesty had called her wimpy once, which she'd known as an insult, but it hadn't bothered her because she knows her arms are very beautiful.
Her hands might be strange and hateful to have, but Nona has something else at her disposal: her body's first tool, those gnashing ripping things, the beloved jewels of her mouth.
She holds out her palm and examines it, trying to figure out which bit is meatiest. The fingers are right out, for being too bony and tasting funny; she doesn't like the crunch of bone unless she's in the right mood. The long side of her palm is tempting, all uninterrupted flesh, but for efficient angle of attack she settles on the pad of fat under her thumb.
Nona had thought of chewing on herself as a decidedly babyish trait, but she supposes if it's for something like this it must be grown-up, or at least something of a grey area. She reassures herself with the knowledge that no-one is watching her, and she isn't even having a tantrum, and Cam won't know to lecture her when she gets home.
Thus emboldened, she pushes her hand into her mouth and thrusts her teeth through her skin.
The pain is sharp and searing and immediate, like her hand is glowing with it, and the fingers of her other hand dig into loose, dry dirt unthinkingly. Popping skin is easy; the muscle underneath has less give, but digging into the fibrous sponge is shiveringly satisfying. Her mouth is full of blood, drooling from her lips and dripping from her chin, sticky and too-warm in the oppressive heat.
It hurts so badly that she thinks she might pass out. During her tantrums she had been so embarrassingly drunk on her own rage, and now, in her right mind, she can feel the vice-grip of her own jaw closing down on her flesh. It can't possibly be what Cam had felt but it makes her eyes roll back in her head, her body go hot and cold at once, her thighs tense—she presses her legs together, her bony knees knocking against one another.
Before she can hit bone she feels her body start to try growing back, which is such a strange and spongy feeling in her mouth that she hurriedly pulls her hand away, splashing blood over the ground. The spot she'd ripped into seals itself over as she watches until even the faint indents of her teeth are gone. It leaves her with an odd, implaceable emptiness.
She feels the wet prod of Noodle's nose pressing up through her shirt. He whimpers at her a little bit when she looks over at her, and she strokes him with her other hand, the unbitten one. "I'm okay, really," she assures him, and she lets him examine the spot she bit. He licks up some of the drying blood, his tongue hot against her just-grown-in skin.
Noodle's slobbering attention is a familiar sensation, but something about all her body is just a bit different, a bit unusual; she notices the bumps on her tongue more than she normally does. She notices intensely where her skin is touching itself and where her sweat has beaded, and how the dirt scrapes against the bit of her ankle where her pants have ridden up, and the claustophobic heat.
It takes her ages before her breathing feels normal again, instead of excitable and shallow and panting, but when it evens out she hoists herself to stand—feeling oddly exposed and embarrassed—and kicks loose dirt over her bloodstains.
"Let's go in," she says to Noodle, and Noodle gives her a Look, maybe because she'd interrupted his studious licking. "I have to wash off, see?"
He doesn't seem entirely satisfied with this explanation, but he is also on a leash, and therefore gets very little say. She washes herself off in the bathroom sink and pats her face dry with the fabric of her shirt, which leaves dirt smeared on her chin, but a little bit of dirt is okay. Then she returns to the classroom to face the world, hand faintly twitching as she goes.
It's Cam who picks her up from school, not Palamedes; Nona is never disappointed to see Cam but admittedly she stifles down a pang when she sees winter-grey eyes rather than warm brown ones at pick-up. She laces her fingers through Cam's as they walk home, the spot where she'd bitten pressing up against the flesh of Camilla's palm. Nona is sure, somehow, that she'll be able to tell—that she'll say something—but of course she doesn't.
"Can you stay out here alone for a little while?" she says, when they arrive home. "I need to talk to Palamedes."
"Yes," says Nona very quickly, because she wants to try more things but also because she enjoys the sweet taste of Responsibility.
"Thank you," says Cam, and she has that tension around her mouth that implies she's not telling Nona everything. Nona feels too strange, in general, to pry—has felt too strange since taking Noodle outside and gnawing on herself. "Tell me if you need something."
Left to her own devices, Nona sprawls out on the couch in unfettered debauchery, flopping her arms and legs every which way. She scoops up the blankets that Pyrrha had left shoved down by the arm, and shoves her nose into the crumpled bundle of them; they smell like Pyrrha does, which is mostly sweat and soap and a bit of cigarette smoke.
No matter how she sniffs she can't smell Cam, which is a harsh disappointment. She had wondered if perhaps she would be able to make out the same sparkles she'd heard, some secret new scent that would send tingles all the way down to her toes. She tells herself there's a little extra sweat in there, but she can't tell if that's actually true.
She runs her palm along the fabric, a little itchy against her skin. It had touched Cam's naked body, and now Nona is touching it, which is nearly the same as getting to touch Cam—she wonders if the blanket remembers what it was like to be pressed up against the round swell of her breasts and the soft, thick hair on her legs and belly and arms and her strong, broad back. If she was a blanket she would remember it perfectly.
Nona drapes the blanket around her shoulders and drags it over to the cigarette drawer, like she's wearing a long and quite grand cape. She pulls it open and paws through a couple of receipts, empty boxes, Pyrrha's shallow ashtray—and there, the tiny back-up box of matches, nestled in the corner.
She snatches it up and carries it to the table. Her prize is five unused matches and a couple of useless burnt ones, which is plenty so long as her fingers don't rebel and she manages to strike them properly. She used to have a terrible time with matches, even when Cam guided her hands, but she's grown-up now and much more precise with her hands.
The first match refuses to light, no matter how she pulls and scrapes the nub against the rough side of the box. She tries until her fingers are tired of pinching it, and then she drops it and allows herself a moment of abject despair before trying again. Even the tinies could probably light a match; although of course, because she's a good Teacher's Aid, she would never give them one.
She drops the first one back into the box, and grabs a second one—this one is longer, and spindly—and tries to strike it. She's got to be faster about it, she thinks, really decisive.
It makes a satisfying sharpish sound and (at long last!) a tiny flame fwooshes to life. Nona is so pleased with herself that she thinks she might scream, except she doesn't because she doesn't want to drop the match; she settles with kicking her feet very happily, her heels knocking against the floor.
She's so distracted that she nearly doesn't notice the click of the door swinging open and Pyrrha's big boots on the floor. She's too busy holding out her finger and trying to convince herself to touch the fire eating up the end of her match to consider what Pyrrha's arrival really means, or at least she doesn't until Pyrrha says: "What the fuck are you doing?" and she hurriedly drops the match.
It falls on the table, where Pyrrha squishes it out unflinchingly with the palm of her hand before anything really terrible happens. Then she puts it in the bin, pulls out a chair, and sits across from Nona with wide, incredulous eyes. Nona half-expects Cam to come bursting out of the other room, but she doesn't. Maybe she has the over-ear speakers on.
Nona wilts. She can't even muster up the conviction to point out that Pyrrha had said a pretty bad word. Probably she is never going to be trusted with Responsibility again, and definitely not with the matches, and maybe she won't even be allowed to be a Teacher's Aid anymore. She has to admit that it wasn't Teacher's Aid behavior, because she could've burned the apartment down, and Pyrrha always says not burning anything down is basically rule number one.
"I'm really sorry," she says, when she can get the words out. "I was just going to try something and then put it out in the sink, I promise, I know it was bad—please don't be mad, I know you are, but please don't be."
"Nona," says Pyrrha.
"I heard Cam last night even though I told you I didn't, I'm sorry." Now that she's started, Nona can't seem to stop; the words rush out of her mouth like pencils from the pencil jar when Kevin tips it over. "And she sounded so nice and sparkly and I wanted to know what it felt like."
Pyrrha raises an eyebrow, but she doesn't actually look mad. "You scared the shit out of me," she says.
This time Nona does almost say Language but she bites the inside of her lip before she does. "I know," she says, meekly.
"You could've asked me, kiddo," she offers. She takes the matches and slides the box closed, setting them aside, and adds, "No more fire, okay? Promise me. A lot of people would have my head if you burnt this dump down."
Nona nods. "Okay."
Pyrrha gets up, carries her chair over to the window, and cracks it open; she takes a cigarette out of her pocket and lights it, giving Nona a look that says if you don't tell, I won't, and rests her hand on the sill. "All right. It makes you antsy, doesn't it? We used to run swords through each other for fun… we used to bleed out in each other's arms for kicks."
There's something weird in her gaze, around her eyebrows, that Nona doesn't know how to place. She has the funny impression that Pyrrha is staring straight through her body, all the goopy layers of her, but when she turns her head the only thing behind her is the kitchen wall.
"Come here," says Pyrrha, patting her thigh. "Let me help."
Sitting on Pyrrha's lap is always wonderful, but something new is pounding in Nona's breast as she settles down. She reaches out and touches the lines of Pyrrha's face, the poky rasp of her stubble, the jut of her cheekbones. Pyrrha's skin is rough and very warm, and she closes her eyes as Nona touches her. She brings the cigarette to her mouth intermittantly, turning her face away to blow the smoke through the window.
At some point, when it's nearly out, she grunts a hm. She says, "Don't scream." And also, "Tell me if you don't like it."
Nona nods, and Pyrrha takes a last indulgent puff, and then—in a single motion—she draws it back inside and stubs it out on Nona's arm.
Even with the instruction, it takes most of Nona's concentration to keep herself from crying out; the shock of it is worse than the pain itself, the fact that it's Pyrrha orchestrating it and not Nona herself. Her eyes flutter shut.
She wriggles closer to Pyrrha without really thinking about it, her whole body shifting antsily underneath the searing burn. She doesn't scream but she does make a noise, nn-mm-mm, her mouth dropped half-open. Nona wonders if Pyrrha is going to kiss her; she'd like to be kissed, but thinks it's probably too much to hope for.
The burning subsides: she cracks open an eyelid to see Pyrrha flicking the cigarette out the window, which she manages a wavering, weak gasp about, because that's littering. Pyrrha takes another out of her pocket and lights it.
She likes watching Pyrrha smoke, although Palamedes and Camilla always tell her the secondhand smoke is unhealthy for her lungs. Once Pyrrha had offered a cigarette to Palamedes and he had said No thank you, I have no interest in giving Cam cancer, I've had enough. But there's something languid and fluid in her motions that Nona finds infinitely pleasing, and Pyrrha says she has nothing to worry about, that it's been too late for her for a long time.
(This had worried Nona, when she'd heard it. She had been three months old, and bad at talking, and prone to worrying. She had crawled into Pyrrha's lap just like this and listened to her heart beat thump-thump-thump until she was absolutely certain that nothing was going to happen to her.)
Pyrrha gets through most of the cigarette before she pushes the burning end into the soft skin of Nona's inner elbow, and Nona jerks at the sudden sensation. This time she keeps her eyes open, blinking at Pyrrha's blurring smile, the strange expression settling on her face. She decides it hurts more when she can see but she doesn't close them again, just whimpers pathetically and squirms.
"Poor thing," says Pyrrha kindly, except she's the one grinding the butt of her cigarette into Nona's skin. "I know, I know."
Nona keens and buries her face into the crook of Pyrrha's neck. The smell of smoke and burnt meat is thick in the air, and she doesn't know if she likes it or not; like this, most of what she can smell is lovely, trustworthy Pyrrha. Her mouth is open, dripping saliva onto Pyrrha's skin and her dusty jacket, her little sounds punctuated by droplets of spit.
She seems to draw out the pain longer than it should possibly go on for, till Nona's body is flush and hot with it. When it stops, Nona cries out quiet and high—please, give it back—but the shifting of Pyrrha's body underneath her tells her that it goes out the window again. Nona slumps against her.
Pyrrha's arm awkwardly loops around her to rummage around in her pocket, but the door opens again before she can pull anything out. She swears under her breath, a pretty bad one that Nona hears from the men at the construction site.
"Good God, it reeks in here," says Cam's voice, though it doesn't sound like Cam at all. "Hello, Nona. What on earth are you doing?"